Fantasy Football Wide Receiver Yardage Regression Candidates - 2024 NFL Sleepers and Busts

The 2023 NFL season featured some impressive performances by wide receivers, but not all of those performances feel sustainable heading into the future. Various factors should lead to various shifts in production.

Today, we'll be looking at some wide receivers who had a lot of receiving yards in 2023 and discussing why their 2024 outlook is worse than last season as far as yardage goes.

Below are four negative yardage regression candidates at wide receiver for the 2024 NFL season.

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Puka Nacua - Los Angeles Rams

Puka Nacua was just so good as a rookie that this projection here is simply about the fact that there's really not much room for Nacua's production to increase, which makes it more likely that he will see a drop in his numbers in 2024.

In 2023, the rookie out of BYU caught 105 passes for 1,486 yards, but that came with the Rams' No. 1 receiver Cooper Kupp missing five games. Even with Nacua's breakout rookie year, Kupp's presence still looms large as an impediment to Nacua equaling last year's yardage numbers.

And even beyond how a healthy Kupp will lead to fewer opportunities, it's just tough to get almost 1,500 yards in a season, and it's tough to do it multiple seasons in a row. Two players topped 1,400 yards in both 2022 and 2023: Tyreek Hill and A.J. Brown. Those are the elites of the elite at wide receiver. Is Nacua on that same level? Maybe! But am I confident betting that he's at that level? Nope. The likelier outcome here is that Nacua is a really, really good wide receiver who probably isn't in a position to equal his 2023 production.

DJ Moore - Chicago Bears

DJ Moore served as Chicago's No. 1 receiver last season, catching 96 passes for 1,364 yards and eight touchdowns. It was a huge year for the former Carolina Panther, and it could have been even better had Justin Fields been healthy all year. Per RotoViz, Moore averaged 88.69 yards in the 13 games that Fields played. That extrapolates out to 1,508 yards.

But that all happened with Moore as the clear top receiver on the 2023 Bears team. That simply isn't the case in 2024, as the team added veteran Keenan Allen and then drafted Rome Odunze in the first round. Add in that the team has a rookie quarterback, and you get a tough situation to predict.

🚫DJ Moore scares me this season because he's never had this level of target competition in his career..

🌟Odunze is part of the "big 3" WR prospects. We know he can ball.

📈Keenan Allen easily has the best hands and is STILL an elite separator.

⚠️Be cautious with drafting…

— LaQuan Jones (@RealDealFantasy) July 5, 2024

While Moore should be the No. 1 receiver again for the Bears, his targets should go down as long as Allen is healthy and Odunze makes a quick transition to the NFL. That's just the reality of going from the No. 1 option in an offense that lacked weapons to the No. 1 option in an offense that has other weapons. There are other places the ball could go now. It's good news for Moore if he wants to play in the postseason for the first time in his NFL career, but it's not necessarily good news for fantasy managers hoping for a repeat of 2023.

Nico Collins - Houston Texans

2023 was a breakout campaign for Nico Collins as he caught 80 passes for 1,297 yards, but the Texans added Stefon Diggs this offseason, which complicates things in Houston. Collins looked like a true No. 1 receiver last season, but Diggs has a track record of being a No. 1 receiver as well.

Then there's the return of Tank Dell. As a rookie, Dell played 11 games and saw his season end early with a fractured fibula. In those 11 games, Dell caught 47 passes for 709 yards and seven touchdowns. Now, the splits from last season are interesting because, per RotoViz, Collins averaged 91.1 receiving yards in games Dell played and 77.2 when Dell didn't, suggesting that Dell's presence helped Collins. But with Diggs coming into the fold, things get really complicated here, so I'm not going to read too much into the five-game sample of Collins' production without Dell on the field.

When the Houston Texans traded for Stefon Diggs, they took what looked like a strong, ascending duo in Nico Collins and Tank Dell, and created a dynamic but crowded trio. Here's a little take-shopping on how that room will sort itself out:https://t.co/DhONU4qjFK pic.twitter.com/IEgQywKuXh

— Matt Harmon (@MattHarmon_BYB) June 12, 2024

The main thing here is that, just like with the Bears, this receiving situation gets a lot more crowded. However, Collins is dealing with something that Moore isn't. While Allen and Odunze are talented players, their addition doesn't change the fact that Moore is the team's No. 1 receiver.

In Houston, the addition of Diggs might actually do that. There's talk about how Diggs isn't quite the same receiver he used to be, but this is still a guy who caught 107 passes for 1,183 yards last year. Sure, it was his fewest yards since joining the Bills, but he's still a high-end NFL receiver. Collins will almost certainly see fewer opportunities with Diggs on the opposite side.

DeAndre Hopkins - Tennessee Titans

The Tennessee Titans remade their wide receiver room this offseason, adding Calvin Ridley and Tyler Boyd. Last year, in his first season with Tennessee, Hopkins had his first 1,000-yard season since 2020, catching 75 passes for 1,057 yards and seven touchdowns.

But Hopkins did that while playing in an offense where the second-most-targeted wide receiver was Nick Westbrook-Ikhine. Hopkins was targeted 137 times, while Westbrook-Ikhine had 45 passes go his way.

#Titans OC Nick Holz on Calvin Ridley, Tyler Boyd, and DeAndre Hopkins:

“As a group, none of them have any real deficiency… But each one of them has kind of an elite trait which you really want to maximize.” pic.twitter.com/bZThDxUcYQ

— The Coachspeak Index (@CoachspeakIndex) June 5, 2024

That's a huge gap, and it's a gap that's set to really slam shut in 2024 with Ridley and Boyd on the team. Those additions leave Hopkins in a weird spot as the 32-year-old receiver tries to figure out his role. He's still a really good player, but is he that much better than Ridley? And will Boyd take over some of the short and intermediate plays?

And what about the quarterback position? Will Levis started nine games as a rookie, throwing for 1,808 yards, an average of 200.9 yards per game. That ranks 22nd among qualifying quarterbacks. Simply put, Levis needs to really vault up that list if he's going to support three receivers in this offense, and there are plenty of questions about whether he's capable of doing that. There's just too many question marks in Tennessee right now.

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